


Smoky Popcorn

by capt_ann



Series: College Disaster Case Eames [2]
Category: Inception (2010)
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, M/M, theyre back at it again, yes Eames does something stupid but Arthur and I (also you lot?) love him for it
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-05
Updated: 2020-09-05
Packaged: 2021-03-06 18:22:51
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,950
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26303383
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/capt_ann/pseuds/capt_ann
Summary: Arthur's dealing fairly well to Eames being so prone to disasters and injuries, but boy if Eames doesn't find ways to make him lose his marbles.
Relationships: Arthur/Eames (Inception)
Series: College Disaster Case Eames [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1864336
Comments: 13
Kudos: 37





	Smoky Popcorn

**Author's Note:**

> here's my stupid lovely boys again
> 
> This one's dedicated to my _lovely_ friends, Lyde and Mousie, and I shall reveal why, later.

“I’m not being dramatic,” Ariadne continues next to Arthur. “I really think if I have to do another survey I’ll stab one of my professors. I mean, we’re in uni, don’t we just go to rate-my-prof and leave it at that?” 

“There’s a difference. You’re rating the TA’s. I don’t think they have rate-my-TA’s.” Arthur frowns and pauses. “Wait, do they? Hang on.”

Arthur takes his phone out to google it, because that raises a pretty good question and he needs to be sure. What he wasn’t expecting, was a text from Eames saying _“Need pickles. Grab a jar before coming back?”_ which was ... suspicious to say the least. No one besides Arthur eats pickles in the fraternity (a damn shame, if he says so himself), and last he checked, the jar at the house was full. 

“Hey, I gotta head back to the house. You okay to go to your class without me?”

“You mean _our_ class?” After taking a look at Arthur’s phone, she nods. “Yeah, alright, never mind. I’ll send you the notes, you can see what that’s about.”

  
  


Eames had a problem. Not about the whole doing stupid things and causing chaos to errupt everywhere (alright, that too—), but about his addiction to marshmallows. Which, at first, seems fine. Most people are addicted to various sweets. Eames, however, comes down with the worst case of stomach aches that Arthur’s ever personally witnessed or experienced if he’s had more than half a pack, so he likes to frown at Eames’s marshmallow packs when he buys them. 

Just two weeks ago, Arthur banned him from marshmallows for a month and threatened to take them away for two months the next time he did anything that resulted in a terrible injury, or if he did anything ridiculously dangerous that could be prevented if Eames just paid attention.

You might be thinking, _“Hey, Arthur, what’s your deal, dude? Taking away the man's marshmallows? The love of his love, second to you? That’s cold.”_ And you could be right, but would you still think so if you knew what Eames did to warrant such a punishment? Let him take you back.

  
  
  


Given Eames’s history, he had prepared himself to arrive at the scene of a crime that day, but the house had been quiet. Not too odd given the fact that most of them had classes going on, or would soon.

Eames wasn’t downstairs in the hallway, sitting room, or any of the bathrooms downstairs. Arthur checked his own room upstairs before Eames’s, but he wasn’t there either.

He found him in the bathroom at the end of their hall.

Stood over the sink. 

Which seems to be soaked in blood. 

“Eames, what the f-”

_“Fuck!”_ Eames completed, his head jerked up and smacked against the open medicine cabinet in the process. “I thought your classes don’t finish till three in the afternoon, love. Are you skipping classes? Very irresponsible of you.”

“Says the one who’s actively missing his major’s lecture,” he huffed and walked to Eames to take a look at the source of all the blood. “What did you do? Why’s there blood on the sink?”

Eames had let out a low whistle and looked away while keeping his right hand covered.

Arthur sighed, his arms crossed over his chest. “Let me see your hand.”

“Or you could just take your pretty bum to class and forget this ever happened, yeah?”

“What did you do,” Arthur repeated, letting out a frustrated sigh before he closed the tap and turned Eames’s hand himself.

Did Arthur say that he was prepared to come back to a crime scene? Yes. But did he have hope that he wouldn’t? Also yes. Expecting your boyfriend to have accidentally chopped off his arm or leg but being absolutely horrified to see the bone of his pinky finger were two things that could coexist.

  
  


And that’s why Eames lost his marshmallow privileges. Honestly, Arthur should have taken it way for longer, seeing how Eames could no longer straighten his pinky finger. 

This time, he smells the smoke before he even opens the front door, which made alarms go off in his head (speaking of, why wasn't the actual fire alarm going off?). He heads inside and reminds himself not to lose his head.

_“Eames!”_ Well, there goes that plan. “What in the _hell_ happened! Why are you bleeding— _why is the stove on fire.”_

“Oh. Well, hello, Arthur.” Eames replies from the sink. “You should probably tend to the pot there first, I’m alright.”

“Eames, I swear—,” Arthur mutters, getting the fire extinguisher. It’s worrying how calmly he’s attending to a pot on fire, really. But at least the fires subsided and the smoke isn’t as suffocating after Arthur cranks open all the windows. 

After fetching the bandaid and antiseptic spray from the cabinet under the counter, he goes to Eames, who is still running his hand under the tap.

“Explain.”

“We’re out of pickles, did I mention?” 

“Yes, an obvious attempt at distraction.” Arthur frowns, bringing Eames hand closer to inspect the cuts on his index and ring finger. They’re relatively small, not the type that Eames get when injuring himself with a knife. “Did . . . did this happen from a pickle jar?”

“God, no.” Eames scoffs, closing the tap with his other hand. “Can you imagine losing to a pickle jar.”

“. . .”

“Oh, right. Sorry.”

Arthur lets out a sigh. “Why is it that you have to cause so much havoc in the middle of my lectures?”

“To be fair, darling, I have no lectures right now,” Eames grins back, “and I got bored after being left unsupervised.”

Yeah, that checked out. Arthur shakes his head, maneuvering them to the sitting room couch before spraying the antiseptic on the cuts and placing two small bandaids over them. “Why were you making popcorn on the stove, anyway, we have the microwaveable ones."

Eames flexes his hands before him, wiggling his fingers around. “Well, we had the stove ones too, and I’ve always wanted to try doing it myself.”

“Well, you almost burnt down the house— _you almost burnt down the house_ —, Eames, how do you set _popcorn_ on fire.” Arthur exclaims, standing up, the entire incident finally processing. “And why didn’t you try putting it o—, how did you cut your hand?!”

Eames chuckles sheepishly. “Alright, so that one’s going to sound a bit . . . I just want to say that I was panicking with everything that was going on, so I might have forgotten to get the fire extinguisher.”

“How. Did you cut your hand?” He repeats, putting his hands on his hips. “Does it have anything to do with the toaster laying on the floor?” The look he got back was answer enough. “Did it happen before or after the popcorn?”

“. . . During?” Eames mumbles. “The popcorn was starting to smell like it was burning when I sliced my fingers on the toaster.”

“I’m sorry, you _what?_ ”

“Honestly, I don’t even know how it happened—, one second I’m holding the toaster, next thing I know I’m falling down and I’m bleeding.”

“It’s a smooth model, how do you cut your hand on it!”

“I was holding it with the metal divers in the middle!”

_“Why were you holding it like that!”_

“Because I was holding a bowl on the other hand, and I couldn’t use my pinky to hold it so I thought it would be faster!”

Arthur has to pause at that. He rubs the bridge of his nose after sitting down. “Did the bowl break?”

“Nah, it’s the plastic one.” 

“And are you okay?”

Eames smiles at that, pulling Arthur by his hand before placing a kiss against his cheek. “I’m fine, love, thank you.” 

“Good.” Arthur nods, and he’s sure Eames knows what he’s about to say because as soon as he starts with, “Because you do realise I’m taking aw—,” Eames interrupts him with a firm kiss against his lips.

Okay, yeah, Arthur’s weak for his kisses, but you can’t blame him. Before Eames, he’d only had one girlfriend who's never kissed him, and _one_ awkward kiss with a boyfriend who lasted a week in high school. So if he melts each time Eames kisses him, it’s only because he’s basically living all the experiences people usually get when they’re teenagers.

It doesn’t matter that they’ve been together for a year, and Arthur should probably be more used to his kisses. His brain goes offline every time Eames does that thing when he licks Arthur’s bottom lip. And when he bites it softly? You’re not getting Arthur out of that daze for a while. And Eames, the little shit, takes it to his advantage each time.

“Eames, no,” Arthur pushes him (that’s probably the first time he’s done that, so he congratulates himself on getting stronger). “You need to listen. You’re not g—,”

Alright, there he goes. Eames pulls him back softly by his jaw and nips at his lips before parting them. Arthur loves the way he kisses him, really. It’s so soft each time. Being with him is quite different from what Arthur thought it would be. At first glance, Eames fits the hockey jock profile perfectly, down to the goofiness and messing around and wrestling with his friends for fun. But as much as Eames’s kisses have power over him, there’s no denying that Arthur generally has power over him, in the sense that Eames is such a lovesick fool for him. He kisses exactly like that. Like a fool in love. Kissing him softly as if he’s so in awe that he _can_ combined with the perfect blend of _yeah this one’s mine forever._ So naturally, Arthur has to give in.

_“There’s a fire!”_ A voice screeches, coming down the stairs. “There’s a fire and you guys are making out on the couch! Eames, I expect that from you, but _Arthur!_ ” At the exclamation, Arthur and Eames part from each other to see Yusuf frantically running to the kitchen, in his shirt and boxers, his curly hair sticking up in every direction.

Eames groans, dropping his head to rest against Arthur’s clavicle. “We took care of that, mate.”

“It was burning for so long, and you come down _after_ it’s been taken care of? I thought there was no one else in the house.” Arthur says after his head clears. 

“Well, at first I thought that it was the chemicals in my room.” 

Eames head bolts up that. “You got them back?”

“Yeah, dude.” Yusuf replies, his eyes matching Eames’s gleam.

Oh no.

_“Nice!”_ Eames laughs, kissing Arthur’s forehead before climbing off the couch to, no doubt, head upstairs and cause another incident that results in Yusuf getting his chemicals confiscated.

“Your marshmallows are gone for three months.” Arthur informs Eames, making him halt. “Don’t look so surprised, you know you deserve it.”

“Aw, come on, Arthur,” Eames says, coming around the couch to kneel in front of Arthur. “It was an honest mistake, let it slide this time?”  
  


“I might have thought about that, but you managed to burn a whole pack of popcorn, so, no. They’re gone.”

“Darling, think about it.” Eames pleads. “What if I—,”

Arthur clasps his hands on top of Eames mouth before he can come any closer. “No kissing to distract me. Actually, no kisses until you finish cleaning up the kitchen.” 

Eames glares at Yusuf, shaking off Arthur’s hands. “This is all your fault.”

“I'm sorry, mate. I'm with Arthur on this one. I told you not to do anything till he got here.”

  
“Oh you bast—,” Eames starts at the same time that Arthur says, “That is _not_ an honest mistake.”

**Author's Note:**

> [ Lyde ](https://archiveofourown.org/users/LydeNicoKITE) managed to burn popcorn, and [ Mousie ](https://archiveofourown.org/users/IAmANonnieMouse) sliced her middle finger by the toaster.  
> So yes, my disaster friends have aided me very well for this segment.
> 
> This was originally supposed to be uploaded for the Kiss of Distraction bingo because Eames has a way with his lips ;)
> 
> (A/E tumblr's [ @thisarthurandeames ](https://thisarthurandeames.tumblr.com//) xx)


End file.
